Oil company execs should be brought in for questioning; Profit-motive of oil cartel behind so-called oil crisis

Anakpawis Representative Crispin Beltran today said that the executives of Shell, Caltex and Petron should be summoned for questioning in a full-blown investigation/hearing in Congress regarding the endless series of oil price hikes. He urged House Energy Committee chairman Alipio Badelles to begin committee hearings on the bills and resolutions calling for the review and repeal of the oil deregulation law.

Beltran said that recent reports that the oil companies continue to rake in billions in profits in the midst of the crisis expose the truth that the oil cartel imposed the last series of price hikes not because of any real or justified reasons but because of their profit-greedy objectives.

“The oil cartel’s justifications for the recent series of oil price hikes are highly questionable. They insist that their price increases are a result of the increases in the global prices of oil and that they have no choice but to make similar adjustments in local pump price. It’s now being exposed yet again in various reports and records from the oil companies’ inventories and profit monitoring sheets that even without the OPHs, Shell, Caltex and Petron are doing quite fine,” he said.

Beltran said that the executives of the Big Three should be questioned by Congress, and their records opened to public scrutiny. He said that the procurement schedules of the Big Three reveal that they have stand-by stocks that are enough to last for three months, “But at the slightest fluctuation in global oil prices, they raise prices of oil that’s already in their inventories.”

“The executives of Shell, Caltex and Petron should be made to answer for the OPHs, and they stand to commit perjury if they even begin to say that they’re losing profits. Now that oil prices have risen to a staggerin $70 a barrel, there’s no doubt that local oil companies and their parent companies will be making even more money.”

“The Macapagal-Arroyo’s weak, band-aid solutions to the fraudelent oil crisis should be exposed. Instead of acting decisively and stopping the oil companies from their greedy profiteering, the Arroyo admnistration is resorting to measures that essentially let the cartel off the hook and free from blame. The oil deregulation law coupled with the innate profit-hungry drive of the oil companies are at the core of the so-called oil crisis, and the only way to stop them at their tracks is to junk the oil deregulation law.”

The veteran labor leader also reiterated his stand that the national govenrment should by back majority shares in Petron and reverse the effects of the oil deregulation law by strictly monitoring the process of procurement and pricing of the oil companies.#